EviL Ras wrote:Heart of the swarm is an excellent, but graphically hungry game! My GT555m struggled a bit, but my new GTX 870m glides through it on ultra. i'd say look for a GTX 860m minimum these days. but [the GTX 870m is a good bang for buck!

you looking for a sleek form, or more power? The GS60 is sleek, and powerful. the GTX 860m version is £1199.99. But its oh so pretty with its 20mm thickness!

If I can't have a Macbook then ideally I want the GS60, I love the form factor, but I'm not convinced I want to spend that sort of money on a Windows laptop I didn't spend anywhere near that much on my Desktop or my Macbook. Although if I want something thats going to last, and is not going to be a terrible experience I might need to up my budget.

jurassicjim wrote:The i7 seems a very good upgrade for £100 and no hassle of doing the ram upgrade yourself. No idea how easy or not HP makes it, but I heard some ultrabooks it can be a pain.

The Samsungs always looked tempting in this price range and form factor.

j

The RAM seems really easy to upgrade, big removable panel on the bottom. I might pop into PC World and have a ply tomorrow, but I'm not sure.

I can't seem to find many Samsung laptops at the minute?

I might have to just save some cash while my Macbook is still running, and hope I can get enough put away to get what I actually want when I have to upgrade.

Also spoke too soon about my Macbook running ok at the minute as I've had 2 crashes tonight while not doing much. So I guess I need something sooner rather than later, but I don't know if I want a Windows machine.

my XTi didn't have any problems at all and before that I had a Clevo machine from another supplier that lasted 5-6 years (I gave it to someone and that someone gave it to someone else and it lasted a long time...)

Having said I don't want to spend £1200 on that MSI Ghost I'm seriously tempted to spend £1400 on the Ghost Pro, although I am concerned about noise and heat from these big laptops as I will want to be using them on my lap, otherwise I may as well save my money and stick to my adequate desktop.

As an alternative to the MSI Ghost I have seen this Gigabyte one, its not as pretty or thin but it has more VRAM a slightly different CPU and cheaper.

Sorry for the double post but in doing some more research it looks like Broadwell should be released soon and it should be more efficient and run cooler. Is it worth waiting until the new machines are out? Assuming my Macbook survives the wait?

I bought it from the Amazon Warehouse Deals so only £1188, never bought from the Warehouse Deals before so not sure what to expect, hopefully it will be mint if not its covered by Amazon's return policy. Now lets hope I like it, quite possibly the most I've ever spent in a single transaction.

You will love it! Its so slim, light, and sexy for a gaming machine! The GTX 870m is impressive. crysis can just about squeeze out ultra with a few tweaks. It can get toasty under load, but just dont game on your lap (with a gaming mouse you generally won't!).

£1188 sounds good. mine was £1500 (although i won it). But it came with 4710 processor (2.5ghz) and 16gb RAM. Its not SSD, its that weird mSATA SSD thing. so it sometimes gets listed differently. But if its the GTX 870m model, its the ghost pro, so probably has the 2 x 128gb mSATA SSD and 1tb 7200rpm HDD.

EviL Ras wrote:You will love it! Its so slim, light, and sexy for a gaming machine! The GTX 870m is impressive. crysis can just about squeeze out ultra with a few tweaks. It can get toasty under load, but just dont game on your lap (with a gaming mouse you generally won't!).

Have to wait till Wednesday at the earliest, probably Thursday for delivery here, but Wednesday would be awesome as I'm the only one in work Tues/Wed. I am hoping to get away with lap use as much as possible. Although I have a plan for sofa use off lap for controller games, not sure for mouse games though. Might have to get one of them lap desk things, or a big arse book like my missus uses.

£1188 sounds good. mine was £1500 (although i won it). But it came with 4710 processor (2.5ghz) and 16gb RAM. Its not SSD, its that weird mSATA SSD thing. so it sometimes gets listed differently. But if its the GTX 870m model, its the ghost pro, so probably has the 2 x 128gb mSATA SSD and 1tb 7200rpm HDD.

It's definitely more than I expected to be paying when I first started looking, hopefully it will be ok for the cheaper price if not I'll ship it back and buy a full price one. I was pretty sure it was the Pro after looking around at them for a while just poorly labeled and described on Amazon.

Yeah, if its GTX870m, its pro version. the normal has GTX 860m. I use it on my lap all the time for video, music, and typing. its just gaming hits an epic 93C under extreme load! and the chasis hits 40-50C. so thats when you really need it on a table! But the 2 fans do their best to chill it back down again during, and afterwards.

The vents are on the top by the way. it sucks air down and vents it through the bottom and sides. so a cooler pad wont really do the trick i dont think.